Friday Roundup: Like Thread Through a Needle

Winding a tale at Story Story Night.

Haikus, Google-style: I'm surely in the minority, but there's something really pleasing about penning Google AdWords. It's a form far more strict than a haiku (due to Google's character limits), so making a poetic 25/35/35-character ad is a real coup. Naturally, I was tickled to learn my site's AdWords will be getting some (relatively minor) recognition at the 2015 Rockie Awards. Poetry they ain't / but effective and slightly / humorous they is. 

When William James Beal Met Sally: Join me and two other featured storytellers for Story Story Night this coming Monday, February 23rd. The theme is "Weird Science: Stories of Strange Chemistry," and I'll be spinning a tale of botany and blind dates. It's gonna be awkward. 

Random band name generator: Shaker Love Cult

Everybody walk the dinosaur: If you have some free time, or a literary story or poem to submit, pop over to the newly redesigned Idaho Review site (which I've been striving to update). We've incorporated some Jurassic-themed artwork from past issues, toyed with the navigation and a parallax home page, and given the overall site a facelift. It's not done yet, but it is looking about ten years younger. 

The sadness of an unclicked link: Required reading for the week includes Derek Thompson's article in The Atlantic about Twitter's ineffectiveness as a traffic driver, Buzz Osborne's intriguing mixtape of "bands that were good but blew it," and this tiny poem by W.S. Merwin (which I first saw on a bus in Portland).